9800 Pro soft mod gone bad?

[batboy]

A friend of a friend got a 9700 Pro as part of some complicated trade. Then it was eventually given to me because it didn't work right. In Windows and 2D apps, it looks fine, but in 3D games it sometimes has a checkerboard effect. I've heard this is sometimes caused by a bad softmod. If this was the case, can it be flashed back to it's default BIOS? If so, is there a good chance it will work ok? Is there a way to check what BIOS it currently has?

EDIT: My bad, it's a 9700 Pro, not a 9800 Pro like the title says.

[HousERaT]

does the card show up in system as a 9800pro or xt? almost sounds like a bad flash with the wrong bios....... dump the bios using atitool and see if you can find a the stock bios for your particular card..... it certainly won't hurt the card any more than it is already.

[batboy]

The device manager shows it as a 9700 Pro.

[HousERaT]

any idea what core it has?... should be an r300

[snvpa]

In my experience this is usually casued by bad memory, though there are certainly most likely many causes of this.